We often ascribe a basic level of humanity to even the cruelest leaders, but People’s Republic of China leader Xi Jinping’s actions have forced us to rethink this assumption. Although the emergence of the novel coronavirus now known as SARS-CoV-2 was
probably not due to China’s actions, the emphasis that its authoritarian system places on
hiding bad news likely gave the disease a sizable head start
infecting the world. But most ominously, China’s obsession with image and
Machtpolitik raises serious questions about its lack of moral limits.
At some point the Chinese Communist Party learned of the epidemic and made a decision to hide its existence, hoping it went away. Exposés in Hong Kong’s
South China Morning Post and the Chinese mainland’s
Caixin show that the information that did flow out of China early in the crisis did so only because of the courage of individual Chinese people in the face of government repression. People in the Wuhan epicenter, however, began to get wise — and scared (
here and
here) — by the end of December 2019, forcing their government to say
something. The authorities gave the impression of a
nontransmissible disease already under containment. We know now this was entirely false, likely designed more to ease civil unrest than protect the people.
♂
